EFFECTIVENESS OF BEDSIDE REMINDER ON REDUCING LABORATORY TEST AND COSTS AT INTENSIVE CARE UNITS

Intensive care units cater to patients with severe or life-threatening illnesses and are very expensive: Any recommendation to reduce the number of avoidable laboratory tests can help lower costs. Laboratory test results are widely used in clinical and public health settings, and the accuracy, reliability, and timeliness of reported test results define the laboratory's quality.
The laboratory results must be as accurate as possible, all aspects of the laboratory operations must be reliable, and reporting must be timely in order to be useful in a clinical or public health setting. Avoidable repeat requesting of tests can compensate laboratory workload. We assumed to evaluate how many requests and how much cost reduction could have been saved if red color bedside reminders were seated and patients’ beds had been enforced in intensive care units.
Firstly, we extracted the frequency of requests and the cost of laboratory tests such as complete blood count, serum electrolytes, urea nitrogen, creatinine, and blood glucose concentration, prothrombin time, and international normalized ratio for 3 months. Reminders were integrated in the red card format (20 x 30 cm) at the intensive care units over 3 months. A 3-month pre-installation and post installation study was carried out to determine frequency of requests and the cost of laboratory tests.
Overall reminder installation immediately and significantly decreased Average frequency and cost of laboratory test such as complete blood counting, serum glucose, urea, creatinine, serum electrolytes and calcium tests, as well as prothrombin time and international normalized ratio (p<0/05).
Intervention such as reminders installation strategies, may improve the efficient use of laboratory tests. Our study suggests that bedside reminder installation is a simple tool that is used for reducing the number of request tests and costs at intensive care units.